Fostering Students' Literacy Skills: The Role of Teachers - Essay Sample

Introduction

The reading and writing experiences are generally considered as multifaceted occurrences. While most reading experiences being at a very young age, it is of utmost importance that students are engaged at different reading and writing levels to shape their identities as readers and writers properly. Teachers, therefore, play a very big role in forming this kind of identity for their students.

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It is key to motivate a child into developing literacy skills and them trying to understand their weaknesses and strengths to be able to guide them properly. For me, therefore, I have had bad reading, and writing experiences that have in the long run taught me life lessons and thus helped shape my identity.

For a long time, I was never the kind of student who found joy in reading nor writing. This made it a lot header for me to express myself through writing. I believe to be far more skilled in expressing myself verbally as opposed to reading and writing. This has been highly attributed to the fact that people often misunderstood my message if it was written.

Some of the challenges I have had to deal with while writing is thinking. As I have come to realize, this is the most difficult thing for me as I tend to think of a lot of things all at the same time. This means that every time I want to write, I have to clear my mind and try to focus as much as possible.

Writing Experiences

One particular incident I remember is the first day I joined the English class at my freshman high school. I recall having very high esteem and feeling so assured of myself. Being late, I tiptoed, signed in for the class and took the seat at the furthest left corner of the room, and comfortably placed my legs on the chair in front of mine for support.

Later on that day, each of the students had to write a note describing themselves as we were all new and there for the first time. When the notes were bought back after a check-up, I saw I line in red reading "I have not understood a word you have said" Each year before then, English had always proved to be a difficult subject for me, and as a result, I always failed at it. This meant that I had to work very hard for the grades I got, and this greatly challenged me.

Another major issue that constantly challenged me was the issue of procrastination. Whenever we were given an assignment, I would keep pushing it until there was no more time to left. This only placed me even in worse conditions where, for instance, I had to complete a ten-page essay a fortnight before the submission date.

Sometimes I would hear my mother tell me 'that is the worst thing you could do if you are hoping to improve your reading and writing skills. I held no personal drive towards reading nor writing, and sometimes I would even ask myself of what use was it for me to write something that I assumed other people knew. That was the problem. I thought whatever I set out to write, other people already knew and thus I saw no need to convey the same message.

Besides my major challenges with procrastination, I believe I have written great content that has left me mostly satisfied. The key to my papers as I have come to believe is having an extremely captivating and catchy introduction. This not only helps in grabbing the reader's attention but also getting them hooked into reading the whole document.

It was during my senior and junior years that we had constant peer reviews and conferences, which helped me better understand my strengths and weaknesses. Before this could come into actualization, I hated peer review and kept asking why I had to do them. This only made me think of them as a waste of my time. As time went by, I began to understand

The essence of having peer reviews and began improving my essays. Since then, my essays would always come in with a commendation from the reviewer, and this made me proud of my ever-growing accomplishments. Looking back, even though I have not perfected the art of writing, I would like to give much credit to all the people who stood by me and kept training me despite my struggles.

Reading Experiences

On the other hand, reading has not been an interesting task for me either. Throughout high school, I always found it hard to read on books, whether for my entertainment purposes such as comic books or magazines, to school books. I always felt some disconnection from them as a result of paying too much attention to the tv.

Conclusion

With time, and as I continue to develop, I have come to understand the need and importance or reading. I have realised that it is mostly through reading that we get to obtain further knowledge and become sharper. With constant training, I have become quite the reader myself. Secondly, when it comes to procrastination, I have realised that it is indeed bad for me as a student and thus I have sought several ways to deal with the issue. Procrastination leads to a lot of pressure at the last minute, thus increasing body stress levels, which is generally not good for the body.